


how love burns through

by andawaywego



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Origin Story, SPOILERS AHEAD, byaaay, i love me some lesbians, some sexual content, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26926120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: “Some people, maybe, she has time to think and then Dani is kissing her again. Sighing with relief into Jamie’s mouth, giggling the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard and, okay.This is something she might be able to keep.”[or: Jamie learns that some people might be worth the effort.]
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 73
Kudos: 891





	how love burns through

**Author's Note:**

> literally don’t @ me. i wrote this in an hour. i haven’t even finished the fucking show. 
> 
> if any of this is wrong, i can’t be blamed! also so sorry for typos or other mistakes. i was in a hurry, my dudes.
> 
> spoilers ahoy, btw.
> 
> now enjoy yourself some 80’s lesbians.

...

Billy Jones trips her and she lands face down in the mud. He’s laughing, as if it’s funny. As if it’s the first time he’s done this trick. It’s raining and his dark hair sticks to his forehead as he yells, “Watch where you’re going, whore!”

Two other laughs break out in harmony, his cronies flanking him on either side. They’re proud of themselves for this effortless act of cruelty. No work on their part, really, just the jutting out of a foot at the wrong moment and then, oh, how she tumbles and there she goes.

Jamie splits her lip open between her teeth, biting it too hard on the way down. Not for the first time, her worn clothes work against her. There’s a tear in her trousers, which means there’s less cushioning and the gravel stings in the open wound on her knee. 

“Clever of ya’,” she mumbles, making sure it’s not loud enough to hear. 

But they’re already gone. Off to the next one. She’s never been anything more than a blight in their path. A fly, buzzing fitfully in their ear. Easy enough to get rid of. Give her a swat, a hit. Call her mother a whore and off she goes. 

Just like that.

.

Then Mikey. Mikey alone. Screaming and crying and she’s seven, what is she supposed to do? Her arms aren’t big enough, strong enough to hold him, but she tries away.

Washes him up with a cup of water right there on the kitchen floor. Stuffs baby food into his dribbling mouth and lays him on the sofa in the living room, swaddled in the nearest blanket she could find. 

He’s asleep by the time their dad comes in, dirty and unrecognizable with all that dirt on his skin. Better that way. Better to not see the way his face falls, the way his eyes blaze when he comes home to nothing.

No one.

Not even a note.

Just three kids he doesn’t know and it’s funny how easy it is for everyone to slip away, isn’t it? No string is strong enough to keep them from drifting, it seems, the world an endless spinning loop that can’t keep track of any of its inhabitants.

.

When it happens—when the water boils over with little Mikey stuck beneath it—Jamie is almost fast enough to nab him before he gets hurt. Almost. Just quick enough to get her hands on him, but too slow to pull him away. To pull herself away. Her shoulder is screaming at her, but no matter.

None whatsoever. The baby is the problem because he’s in so much pain and he’s crying and Jamie doesn’t know what to do. There’s no one home. No mother to comfort him, to know the next steps. No father to intervene and no Denny. Off somewhere else—at a friend’s house or else on the streets because anywhere is better than home when the kitchen is flooded with steaming, burning water.

But water’s easy enough to clean up.

Mikey, however—

She hefts him to the living room, him bawling the whole time and squirming against him. Almost drops him once. Twice. Sets him in the middle of the rug and gets to the telephone. There are so many things that she is not old enough for quite yet, but knowing the right number to call is not one of them.

.

It’s the fathers that don’t work that she hates the most. They’re the ones that linger in the house, no job to toddle off to, because they have nothing better to do than drink themselves into a stupor and put out cigarettes on the arms of the boys unfortunate enough to be sharing some cramped attic bedroom with her for a handful of months.

The worst, perhaps, is saved for her. She may not have pock-marks up her forearms, but they brush her hair from her face. Call her a _pretty, little thing._ Corner her when she’s doing housework until their wives interrupt, intervene, saving her at the last moment without doing that exactly. 

Nine years. She makes it nine years. Hot breath on her face. Pudgy fingers poking into her hips and her chest, the fleshy parts of her that she tries to hide in looser and looser clothing. 

Nine years and then she nicks the last family’s meager savings, stuffing her pockets with watches and jewelry and stolen cigarettes, and hitchhikes to the train station at sixteen. Throws the lit butt of a cigarette at Billy Jones’s house on her way out of town. 

Hopes it catches fire and doesn’t stick around to see if it does or not.

.

There are worse things to do than kick around London with a crew just rough enough to keep her hidden, but always high enough to pay her almost no mind. A year passes. Then another. She camps out on peoples’ sofas or floors. An alley more than once until some policeman comes and nudges her awake. Sometimes, girls let her stay the night but not often enough to count on it.

She’s fine. Really.

Jamie tells herself this so many times that she can’t really believe it anymore.

But no matter.

She makes money the easiest way she can find. Picks someone out on the street and follows them long enough to see where they live. Learns their habits for a day or two, then lets herself into their flat when they head off to work or school

( _the key is almost always under the bloody mat_ )

and takes what she can without arousing suspicion. Pawns it off.

She’s good at it, for the most part. At least enough for one meal a day, though there are rougher times, certainly.

That’s when she hits the pubs to find some university girl living life just dangerously enough to buy her dinner. Take her back to whatever dormitory they’re living in for the night. Women are something she understands. Something she’s good at.

They like her easy flirtations and the confident brush of her fingers on their knuckles. They like how brazen she is and she’s a quick enough study. A few fumblings her first time eating one of them out, but it gets sorted out quickly enough. She gets good at it. Really good. Likes the way they squirm and cry out beneath her. Likes the way it makes her feel—that power.

She likes women. What she doesn’t like is ache in her lungs every time she leaves one behind. That’s part of the deal, really. And she tells herself it’s for the best. But most of the girls don't really seem worth the risk of that feeling.

A girl is how it all falls apart, actually. She wakes up in a flat she’s been in before, though she hadn’t been sober enough previously to make the connection. The girl—Amy, maybe, but she can’t quite remember—is very insistent on throwing her out as soon as possible. She’d be hurt if she ever bothered to let herself get attached.

She’s heard it all before.

_My boyfriend is—_

_I’m not really—_

_—before anyone sees—_

She waves it off. A fly buzzing. Swat it away with, _Catch ya’ later, yeah?_ and saunter out the door in the same clothes she’s always wearing.

It’s the girl’s neighbor that recognizes her. She’s buzzing around in the hallway with a few shopping bags and Jamie remembers. She can recall the elderly woman’s pinched face as they locked eyes. It had been quick, mostly because Jamie was scurrying out of the flat as she did it just a week back, pockets filled with cassette tapes and jewelry to pawn off. 

Somehow, the woman manages to call some burly building manager before she can even make it out the door. It’s when she’s being cuffed out on the sidewalk that she catches sight of Maybe-Amy looking out the window, watching her.

Jamie throws her a grin, silver quick, because why the hell not?

Don’t get attached. That’s the trick. Nothing to lose that way.

.

It’s different inside than she thought it would be. Her bunkmate is nice enough. Reads a lot. Really, they’re nothing alike save for the fact that they’re both locked up in the same place. Jamie thinks the only reason they got on as well as they do is because neither of them is overly fond of talking. 

There are classes. Clubs. Sometimes they get to go outside and stand in the rain and it’s funny how different it is from standing inside, looking out at the rain.

She’d thought it would be rougher. Harsher. But it’s easy enough to get by with your head down, and she does. The other women don’t mind her much. She makes it as clear as she can that she has no interest in _being_ there, even if she has to be.

It’s not worth trying at all.

Dr. Roberts is the only person who forces her to talk. Tamara, as she insists on Jamie calling her. Her questions are pestering and do a lot more infiltrating into the normally busy buzz of her mind than Jamie is altogether fond of.

_How are you doing today?_

_What’s your family like? Any siblings?_

_How do you feel about that?_

_And how do you think that’s impacted you?_

She hates it. But if she doesn’t talk, all they do is sit there for an hour in the tensest silence she’s ever been in.

So Jamie talks.

Possibly for the first time in her life.

But that’s not the important part.

The important part is this:

When she talks, someone _listens._

.

It’s like bringing something to life, really. She spends more and more time in the garden. It’s not one of the more popular ways to spend time because so much of it happens out in the muggy heat of summer, so it's quiet and peaceful as anything can be in a place like that. The other women that are there are much older than Jamie is, but they teach her things. Show her how it works and there’s so much to learn.

Jamie feels like she’s drowning. Not for the first time, but certainly for the best time.

The first thing she’s ever proud of is a dog-rose. Little weedy thing, all forgotten in the corner the first day she’d wandered around, drooped sad and lonely with a feeling she's carried all her life. But some sun, some food, some water and there it is. Upright and proud and the other women coo over it. Ask for her help with others.

 _A natural,_ they say and Jamie doesn't know about that but this is the first thing in her life that's ever made easy sense.

There are other plants, certainly—other things to care for—but it’s the dog-rose that keeps her heart for the rest of her time, even long after it’s gone.

Beaten and broken and forgotten. And then, just as easily... _not_.

Funny what a little love can do. She’d never known.

.

When she gets out, she cuts off her long hair in the bathroom of the hostel she’s staying in with a pair of safety scissors. It was all the woman sharing her room had, but it does the job enough. Remembers the way the men in those foster houses would tug at it. The way girls she never saw a second time curled their fingers in it.

For the first time in her life, Jamie looks into the mirror and knows the person looking back at her.

.

The house is pretty enough. One tough bugger, to be sure, but Jamie’s blood sings with the excitement of it all. So much green. Green as the eyes can see. Like a painting, maybe, or some fairytale she heard as a kid but has long since forgotten. 

Truly, the entire house feels that way—like there is something there of a story, one no one can quite remember. There is a presence and it hangs heavily in the air, suffocates you inside the house at times. So Jamie sticks clear to the gardens, to the grounds, all that green.

Works long hours. Sun-up to sun-down most days.

Within the first month of working there, she gets a letter from Mikey, who's still living back home. He knows they haven’t spoken in years, but he’d managed to track her down after weeks of trying and their dad is gone, so wouldn’t she please come back for the funeral?

There’s mention of Denny in the letter—married now, a kid on the way. Jamie can’t even imagine.

She carries the letter in her pocket for days, agonizing over her reply. The last time she’d seen Denny, she was fifteen years old and he was fighting some other boy outside the school. Bloody-toothed and red-faced, he’d looked just like their mother for the split second their eyes had met, but Jamie hadn’t lingered. He’d made no effort to contact her in the houses she wound up in, so she hadn’t bothered then either.

Why give more of yourself than someone else is willing to match?

Mikey had been sent away somewhere else. Too little to be put up in some of the houses nearby. She’d gotten word from her case worker just a year in that he was being adopted and she tried to imagine it. Couldn’t quite manage.

What family would want a such a _scarred_ little boy?

The guilt at that thought ate at her for months and then she tried to stop thinking about Mikey and Denny entirely. Eventually, it stuck.

Mostly.

Family, she thinks, requires more fight than she has in her. 

Her reply is simple and frank.

In so many words: _Thanks, but no thanks_.

She doesn’t even bother to sign her name.

.

She likes Owen. Likes the way he smiles, all teeth and eyes that look for all the world like they’ve never known pain. The truth of his home life is hidden in his laugh and Jamie gets to know the feeling.

“Don’t go fallin’ in love with me,” he jokes to her one day, after she compliments the sauce he’s been stirring for well over an hour.

She laughs, washing her hands in the sink. “Trust me,” she says, “that won’t happen.”

“Can no one tame that steely heart of yours?” he asks next, still a jest, but a stranger one.

Jamie hums a few bars of a song she’s long since forgotten the lyrics of and shrugs. “None so far have tried,” she tells him.

He leaves it at that, understanding something in her posture that doesn’t want to be more specific. It’s back to jokes with Owen, then. And gossip. Owen loves gossip. Sometimes he whispers bawdy and outrageous stories about their employers’ personal lives that seem just half-baked enough to carry some truth.

There is something of Henry in Flora’s smile, yes. But they’re stories, aren’t they? Like the things Flora talks to when no one is there. Just imagination. A bit of fun. No harm done.

She likes Hannah, too. Likes her quiet nature. The candles in the old chapel. Sometimes Hannah will come out to the garden, looking a little lost, and will happily sit and watch Jamie work in silence. 

She never expects a conversation. That’s something Jamie can work with.

In the mirror one night in her third month, she says, “You’re fine. Everything is just fine,” and finds that she’s actually starting to believe herself.

.

Dominic and Charlotte’s deaths are a shock that keeps tightening its grip. Miles and Flora spend much of their time in their rooms, playing games of pretend and living in worlds where they don’t have to accept it.

The funeral is sad enough. Jamie wears black and doesn’t shrug away when Owen offers her his arm on their way to the cemetery. He does the same for Hannah and the three of them hobble their way forward like a thing with three heads and six legs and more grief than they can bear.

Peter is quiet. Henry doesn’t come. The children don’t even cry. 

It’s off. The whole thing is wrong. 

Jamie imagines that it’s her father in the casket meant for Dominic as it's lowered beneath the soil. The headstones are solemn and stone and look nothing like either of the people they belong to. Carry no bit of who they once were. She’s certain her father’s doesn’t either, wherever it is.

She can’t remember if she cried when Mikey’s letter came. Part of her thinks she must have, but the memory is somewhere else, tucked out of reach. 

It doesn’t matter. Another fly. Say a prayer or two, light the candle, and move on.

.

Flora is inconsolable and then just as easily not. 

Miles is stormy-eyed and stone-faced, which is the strangest combination in a boy of his age.

It’s the damnedest thing.

Jamie tries not to read too much into it. She only sees the children every so often. Doesn’t really know them at all, really.

Whatever is going on with them, she’s fairly certain it’s a bit above her pay grade.

.

.

Peter is a git. Jamie calls it ’em as she sees ’em. He eyes her with interest for a few weeks and then must finally comprehend the face she makes at him and promptly forgets about her. There’s something in his presence that sets her on edge and she can’t quite decide if it’s actually him or the way the air in the house changes when he’s around. The way Miles goes quiet, trailing after him silently, like some other little boy he never is when Peter isn’t around.

Flora, too, is enamored, but then Dominic and Charlotte die and Jamie can’t blame them for clinging to something familiar.

It would likely be their uncle, if he could only be bothered to visit.

It’s not a problem until Rebecca is hired and, even then, there is a tenuous stalemate between her and Peter that Jamie hopes will never end.

But it does.

It crumples like dry dirt in your fist, fluttering out in the gaps between your fingers.

All things do.

Most of the time, she’s fine with that.

But with Peter, it’s never just one domino. It’s the whole fuckin’ lot.

.

They talk about love one night, wine-drunk and sloppy. Before Peter and his dominoes. Before Rebecca and the lake.

When it’s just the four of them—Hannah and Owen and Rebecca and Jamie. Four people who work in a house bigger than either of them could ever feasibly manage on their own, sitting around a table like they do it all the time.

“And what’s yours, Jamie?” asks Owen, pointing his sloshing wine glass her way.

Jamie raises an eyebrow. Looks around at the other two. “What’s my what?” 

Owen guffaws. “Your big tale of heartbreak and woe?”

Hannah gives her a look that very much says that she would help her if she could. Rebecca just looks curious, if a little forlorn over everything Peter—always everything Peter.

“I don’t have one,” she tells him honestly.

“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second,” he returns. “Look at you! You’re telling me you’ve never been in love?”

An easy enough question to answer. But it sticks a little in her throat. That _no_. Not because she’s second-guessing but because she’s realizing how true it is for the first time.

“Never,” she tells him, then mimes a cross over her heart. “Swear on my own dad’s grave.”

A jab of something beneath her lungs at that, but she just takes another drink.

“But—” Owen begins.

Hannah finally comes to her rescue. “Oh, let her be,” she scolds. She turns her attention to Jamie. “Ignore him and eventually he’ll tire himself out.”

As if Jamie hasn’t worked with them for nearly two years. As if she doesn’t know this house, that garden, these people nearly better than she knows herself.

Owen seems a bit remorseful for the pestering, but he doesn’t apologize. Instead, he pours her more wine and says, “God bless whatever lion tamer manages to pin you down,” he says and Rebecca laughs for the first time all night.

Hannah rolls her eyes.

Jamie clinks her glass to his when he offers.

What she doesn’t say: whatever love offers can’t possibly be worth the risk of losing it.

.

There are girls in town. If she wanted, Jamie reckons she wouldn’t have to spend a single night alone.

But she doesn’t want. 

That’s the thing.

And when Rebecca’s body turns up in the lake, she’s all too happy with her choices.

.

The next funeral is harder. No one manages to look each other in the eye. 

The talk in town is the worst of it. Jamie has to play her music loud enough to drown out what conversations filter through the ceiling of the pub below. Her name is on everyone’s lips, and Peter’s is on no one’s, and isn’t that the rub?

 _Poor girl,_ they say, in that voice reserved for those they pity, but none of them know enough to blame anyone but the victim.

Peter, Jamie says, to herself and then to Owen, to Hannah.

They know. It should be enough, but it isn’t. It can’t ever be.

The grass in the gardens dies in patches and Jamie works for weeks to bring them back to life. Her flowers droop magnificently, bent down as if in mourning. The air aches for Rebecca, for the loss of her and the air snatched and stolen from lungs that dreadful morning. 

Jamie cannot bring herself to cry, so she lets her plants do it for her.

.

Time passes. Life moves on. The world turns green again, but Miles and Flora grow more and more withdrawn and there are days when it feels like Hannah is slipping away too. Owen is steadfast and strong. He talks about his mom sometimes and Jamie listens.

What she likes about Owen is that he never asks her to give more than she can. He only offers what she’s willing to take.

She stays with her plants. Talks to them sometimes. A little bit of love. A lot, when necessary. 

More than what Rebecca got, maybe, but all Jamie has left.

.

The funny thing is that her and Dani are never formally introduced. She catches sight of her, sure, the day she arrives. Peeks through the hedges to watch her disappear into the house, her hand being tugged insistently by Flora.

She’s pretty. Very. Hard to look at, with eyes like the summer sky, if Jamie were ever one for poetics, but she’s not. She isn’t. 

It’s easier to pretend they already know one another. For some reason, this feels more natural than any other option.

She lets her gaze stick to Dani's form, trace lines over her face like she's trying to memorize the sight of her. It feels important, for some reason, to commit her to memory. And it isn't that Dani doesn't notice. She does. Sometimes she'll look up and find Jamie staring at her and her cheeks will turn pale pink at the attention. 

It's... _curious._

Jamie thinks for a day or two that her mind is playing tricks on her. Makes Dani laugh because she knows how it feels when there isn't enough air. Decides easy acquaintances can be enough. It's something she can manage. Owen and Hannah and even Rebecca are fine examples of it.

It's funny, the way Dani draws her in. Jamie, for the first time in years, finds her mind preoccupied with something made _human_ _._ Not green or petaled, but able to blossom, yes. Capable of blooming.

Just find the right method. Each flower is different. How much love does it take for someone like Dani to simply _stand where she's planted_?

.

Another funny thing: Dani’s eyes linger, too. At first, Jamie thinks she might be imagining it, but she isn’t. She knows it that night Dani grabs for her hand.

Jamie realizes something that makes her hands unsteady for days:

There is something about Dani that makes her want to try. 

This is the plainest truth she has ever known.

.

So she does.

She tries.

They kiss in the green house and it’s something, something, _something_ —not enough. 

That’s okay. Try again, maybe.

Coffee in the morning. Shit coffee, yes, but trying all the same. They both are, maybe, if only Dani could say it in a voice of her own.

But there’s Flora to fret over and Miles to worry about. Owen’s mother is dead and Hannah is becoming lost to something else. 

There is something to the house that takes people. Jamie hasn’t found the right way to phrase it yet.

Dani is damaged. She lost her fiancée. Sees him, too, which would maybe make Jamie think she were crazy if it weren’t for everything else in her life. 

She knows what it’s like, either way. Some days, she could swear that her father’s hand is on her shoulder. Mostly, she hides herself with the plants and hopes that she’ll grow out of it in time, stretch her stems and leaves toward the sun, toward the water, and just _be_.

Her head is too busy for that most days.

Has been for as long as she can remember.

But Dani.

Oh... _Dani._

With Dani, everything inside of her goes silent.

Dani says something about a pub, Dani lets herself be led out into the woods by a woman she’s only known for a month. Dani _listens_ and that’s more than Jamie could ever ask of another person.

There’s something to saying it, too. All this heartache and loss and things she never quite had but dreamt of anyway. Getting it all out there like she had with Tamara, but for something other than spite this time. More effort than she's used to with people. She's been so sure all this time that nothing could reflect back the strength of that struggle.

Plants are worth the effort. They shine it back to you just as brightly. What you give them comes back in spades.

But Dani’s eyes shine like that too, and her smile curls in a way that nearly takes Jamie out at her knees. 

Green, green, _bloom_ and all that.

Some people, maybe, she has time to think and then Dani is kissing her again. Sighing with relief into Jamie’s mouth, giggling the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard and, okay.

Right.

Yes.

This is something she might be able to _keep_.

.

Owen and Hannah are still up when Dani pulls her into the house as quietly as they can manage. Their voices can be heard drifting out to the foyer like lazy ghosts, but Jamie pays them no mind. She’s too busy to, it seems. She keeps ending up pinned to things like trees and walls and then, finally, the banister. Dani’s fingertips, pink from the cold, freeze their way under Jamie’s shirt, pulling it from her pants before they’re even to her bedroom. She goes for Jamie's belt, the button of her pants, eager and fevered and _so much_ that Jamie has to take a breath.

“Wait, wait,” she whispers against Dani’s lips, rough and red from the kissing. “There are... _children_ in this house.”

Dani giggles again, this lovely little sound that Jamie kisses away. There’s a table digging into her back, but Dani is so warm against her front that she hardly even notices. 

“They’re asleep,” she says, hushed like they’re anywhere near the children’s bedrooms. 

“Right, right.” Jamie flips their positions and it’s Dani this time, back pressed against her door. She moans and the sound thrills through Jamie’s blood like nothing ever has before. “But there are things I want to do to you that you might want to be laying down for.”

A gasp as Jamie ducks her head and scrapes her teeth along the underside of Dani’s jaw. “Care to...elaborate?”

“Definitely.” Jamie brings her head back up and presses another kiss to Dani’s lips. She can’t stop, it seems. There’s something magnetic inside this other woman that refuses to let her drift too far.

Finally, they make it to the bedroom, Dani clicking the lock in place for good measure, and the shadows wash over them—just the silvery patch of moonlight visible through the clouds lighting up the side of Dani’s mattress.

When they’re kissing again—when Jamie is tugging Dani’s sweater over her head, pulling that ridiculous scrunchie from her hair—Dani pants something like, “I’ve never...not with…” into the hollow of Jamie’s neck and it’s just enough to give her pause.

“Don’t worry about that,” she says, as calmy as she can manage with the way her heart is chipping against her rib cage. “Let me take care of you.”

She wonders if anyone has ever said those words to Dani before. Given the way her eyes widen, shimmering a little in the moonlight, she’s fairly certain the answer is _no_.

“Okay,” Dani says, and the rest of it is a beautiful blur of careful movements and lingering touches.

Jamie takes her time, keeping her promise with her lips and her fingers and her tongue, because Dani might just be worth the effort. She really, really thinks so. After the first time, Dani is love-happy and at ease, whispering endearments and praises as Jamie kisses the fine bones of her hips, runs her tongue along the valley between her pale breasts.

“You’re real, aren’t you?” Dani asks after she makes her way back up, catching Jamie’s face in her hands and running her thumbs along the edges of her lips, the faint lines beneath her eyes. 

“As far as I know,” Jamie says, trying to joke but meaning every word. 

She knows the feeling. She can hardly resist the urge to pinch herself just to check and see if she’s dreaming.

But, no. No dream could ever live up to the way Dani kisses her then, the way her hand trembles as it makes its way down to settle between Jamie’s thighs. It strikes Jamie—arms around Dani’s shoulders, nails digging into her skin, tugging the other woman’s weight down to ground her, trying to resist the urge to buck her hips into each movement—that Dani is probably the first person to touch her this way.

And that’s good, really.

Perfect, even.

Perfect.

She marvels at that, Dani’s lips on her collarbone, her mind a lovely blur of white noise and bright colors. What a word.

A word that she thinks might have never existed before this moment.

.

There’s more to it than that. More to come. Heartache and the bitter taste of loss in the back of her throat. There will come a day when she’ll look into her reflection and be disappointed to see herself. Only herself.

There are good things, too. Incredible things. _Perfect._ And more years of happiness than some people can ever hope to have.

All of that is still barreling their way as Dani and Jamie collapse into the sweat-slicked sheets, spent. It’s ruthless and fast and entirely inevitable. 

The beauty of mortality, perhaps. 

But it's not here yet. They have some time still. So much of it, maybe.

So, for now, Jamie tucks her face into Dani's neck and kisses her sweat-slicked skin.

Another beauty: _love itself_.

Jamie never even imagined. Hadn’t even been looking. But it found her anyway. Dani's lips taste like forever and _can I keep you_? So Jamie buds her tongue against the roof of her mouth, memorizes her some more, like, _yes, yes, yes, please never let me go._

She'd been lost. Little dog-rose in the corner, half-dead and so so so on. But Dani found her, blooming and beautiful, and softer than she has any right to be. And now she is sleepy-limbed and grinning as the sky outside begins to lighten behind the clouds—Jamie can feel her leaves shaking off the rain, curling up to the sun.

She found her and there’s something in the way she kisses that says _oh, love, there you are,_ and Jamie realizes that she might not have been the only one looking for something she never thought she'd have.

She can keep this. She's _going_ to keep this. How dare someone let this slip away.

One single inch of it.

Dani curls her into a comforting embrace as they fall victim to the exhaustion in their bones and Jamie knows it’s too late to warn herself against this. People, it seems, might be worth the effort after all.

Owen and Hannah and Rebecca and Flora and Miles and all of them. Any of them. Come one, come all.

And this: _Dani_ , who presses a kiss to the back of Jamie’s head and tugs her impossibly closer as she drifts off to sleep.

Jamie doesn't think any other soul could find itself happier to be wrong.

...

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> and then *SPOILERS* Dani dies. oops. :(
> 
> title from “Putting in the Seed” by Robert Frost (sorry that sounds so sexual).
> 
> i broke a promise to write this fic. talk to me about it on [tumblr](https://andawaywego.tumblr.com/).


End file.
